


Hounded

by FrostbitePanda



Series: Red, Blue, Green [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Battle, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Max Returns, Post-Movie, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconstruction of the Citadel, Slow Burn, romantic-ish, semi-fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:38:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/pseuds/FrostbitePanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The desert lived within her, and he belonged in the desert. With scorched earth and swirling dust devils.</p><p>(Max returns. All is not well. Until it is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Only the Smoke

There is no time.

He speeds to the smoke.

He saw it in the night, awakened by the nightmares that dogged him. It began as it usually does, a familiar dance.

All fire and engines, engines that eat up what little he had left worth living. "Max, where were you?" They fall in a storm of sand and fire. Their images blur thickly, bleeding into the hollowed spires of the Citadel, replaying the horror of his bondage. He is chained and branded, strung up and masked like an animal. His tormentors wear shiny bandoliers of bullets, not the white and pearly scars of War Boys. The blood bags caged next to him are no longer faceless drifters. He sees them all, vivid and all too real. Dag, Toast, Cheedo, Capable... _Furiosa._

A great roar tears from his chest, his arms flashing in rage. Not again.

Eyes wild and raving he saw the pillar of smoke rising dim against the starlight. He always knew what direction she was in, no matter how far his trek had taken him from her.

His bike roars savagely under him. _Fool,_ his mind hisses. He tries not to think about his low fuel. His meager weaponry. The ghosts he has desperately been running away from, trying to keep at his back. He thinks about turning around, to never allow those images to take on a reality that he could never escape. It would be safe. It would aid in his survival, tenuous and empty as it was. It would be what he has always done.

But his mind is only on her. Only the smoke and all the terrible things it could mean.

He finds himself cursing her for a moment. He had told her hope was a mistake.

+++

_"Max."_

_The word slashes out of her mouth, filling the night-filled infirmary. She tongues the hard edges contemplatively. Tasting it. There is a softness there too, much like the man the word represented._

_She had repeated it much in the same manner after the Wives had told her of how he had snatched her from death's greedy palms. How his big hands cradled her skull. How he had given her his name like gift. She would need it again._

_She felt a touch of magic in her voice whenever she said it. An incantation. A name he had shared with no one else in many years. A tiny, precious sliver of himself._

_She felt that now. His name, his blood, had saved her. She was renewed. High-Octane._

+++

Her throat is raw. Commands burn in her chest. Two days of stolen, fitful slumber, quick bites of hard tack, and a few glorious slugs of water. Two days of hot metal in her hands, smoke curling in her nostrils and ricochet ringing in her ears.

The majority of the able-bodied War Boys were scattered and lost, or they were lashing against her walls with the rest of Gas Town and the Bullet Farm. They would break it in a few hours, she knew.

The Wretched and even some of the older, stronger War Pups had been armed as best as they could manage. They had been able to throw the siege back, for now.

Bullets were a dwindling, precious commodity. Guzzoline even more so, to feed their flame-throwers and the few vehicles they had fixed up well enough to go and meet the rag-tag war party.

She crouched behind a parapet of ravaged stone. Toast was beside her, binoculars to her blood-streaked face, watching the siege undulate and reform below. "How many you got?" Toast barked without taking her eyes away.

"Thirty-two," She knew as well as she knew her own name. The same name the marauders had chanted mockingly when they had arrived at their gates. The memory still made her stomach roll in fury.

Toast said nothing, still watching. Furiosa lifted her rifle, picking off a sly one scaling up the side of the cliff.

"Nice." Toast crowed.

"Should've seen that one," Furiosa returned with an accusing growl. Toast ignored her.

There was a low, two-toned whistle. Their signal not to shoot, and Capable was beside them. "How's it going?" She chirped, her tone belaying little of the scene and circumstances surrounding her.

"Oh, you know... _five o'clock!_ " Toast cried within her flippant reply to Capable's inquiry. Furiosa took aim at her five o'clock. "Nice one!" Toast cried again as another assailant fell from the balustrade.

"How is it on your end?" Furiosa asks Capable pointedly as she reloads again.

An indulgent grin spreads across the girl's pale face, "Splendid."

The weight of the word settles on the three of them and sets them to renewed determination.

Furiosa slides the bullet home. "Do it."

+++

_The cosmos glows above them, milky and star-dusted. The Vuvalini share tales of the past world: satellites and messages and togetherness. Their words comfort and hypnotize the girls, but hold no such attentions from Furiosa. She had no interest in the past._

_She sits alone, the others settling for sleep and knowing better than to intrude on her vigil. She searches the salt pans swathed before her like an ocean. She wonders what it looked like before- all shimmering water, roaring and moon-charged._

_The hot sand cools and a breeze blows salty ghosts over the horizon. She doesn't move when he comes to sit next to her, shoulders brushing like leaves._

_He sighs, knees tucked protectively, mouth working as she has come to expect when he tries to speak. "Sleep," The word seems to escape him unbidden and he glances at her quickly, eyes slanted with worry. "You need... sleep."_

_She looks at him, silent. She tries not to think about how in a few hours, they will never see each other again. She tries not to think about how his answer to her invitation, although expected, had weighed on her organs like a cancer, growing more noticeable and less harmless with each passing hour. She tries not to think about how in the span of a day, this man had somehow proven to be the best partner for her in every way._

_He nods in the face of her silence, understanding in that inexplicable way they always simply knew. He turns his face back to the white wild and she allows herself a few more seconds to memorize his profile._

_The next morning, sunlight pressed on her eyes like a warm blade. She lifts herself immediately, arms and eyes searching for danger. Her sleep had been far too heavy. A thick weight falls from her chest and onto her lap. She looks down and finds the Fool's jacket._

_He is in the rig, already awake and readying himself. She wordlessly hands him his jacket, seemingly the most precious thing left to him. He takes it wordlessly, nodding as he hops down from the rig in front of her, pulling it on._

_She acts. All instinct. Allowing herself at least one moment that is not calculated and carefully weighed. Every movement was based on survival out here. No time for thoughtlessness._

_Her fingers gently thread through the bristly ends of his hair at the back of his neck. She feels him stiffen, arms still raised to don his jacket. She feels his steely, thread-bare muscles ready for fight or flight. She steps in front of him slowly and applies a steady pressure to his spine. He leans his head down, haltingly, almost as if against his own will. She brings her forehead to his, eyes downcast, taking in his form one last time._

_She feels a long breath leave him, burning a humid trail on her chest. She feels his callous fingers at the base of her neck, circling the blistered scar there ever so- as if nursing a wound._

_She moves her palm to his shoulder, nails going white. She closes her eyes against the encroaching sun and presses a small ghost of a kiss to his brow._

_She feels him breathe in sharply, as if wounded. She releases her hold, walking past him and never looking back._

+++

He will have to run for three miles.

He tries to keep his feet under control, willing them to a more steady pace. His body is swirling with energy, with bright-lit fury, but he can't blow it all on the pursuit. He learned that long ago on the road.

At two miles out, he smells the acid fumes of guzzoline and something else he cannot and will not identify. His heart throbs in his chest. His lungs burn, burn, burn. His lips are cracked and bleeding. Froth boils from his mouth. His hands, his legs, his feet are numb from the vibration of his mad pursuit.

He hears the sounds of war from a half-mile off. The smoke is still churning, the smeared char of what was once gates bleed into his vision.

He keeps running. Violence hummed in his arms, rage blistered in his heart. The desire to rent and tear is fire and lightning in his veins. Potent and powerful. High Octane.

+++

_She didn't recall his body leaving hers on the platform. The adrenaline of victory, hard-fought steadied her then. Only feeling the heat of his gaze from below told her he was gone._

_She learns everything from his eyes, gleaming and redemptive through the maddening throngs. She nods to him. A benediction._

_She hears Cheedo's question from far away, "Will he come back?"_

_+++_

_Last night again, you were in my dreams_

_Several expendable limbs were at stake_

_You were a prince, spinning rims_

_All sentiments Indian-given and half-baked_

_I was brought in on a palanquin_

_Made of the many bodies of beautiful women_

_Brought to this place, to be examined_

_Swaying on an elephant, a princess of India_

_\- Go Long_ Joanna Newsom


	2. Flame and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quarter mile off, he falls to his knees.

The shots go silent from their side. Dawn trickles in. The invaders are curious, suspicious, wondering.

They find that the gates are open and undefended. They glut in victory as they stride in like heroes, wasting rounds on their ill-conceived pride. The place is deserted. Theirs for the taking. They knew the Wretched and the War Pups could not withstand their wrath, even with their precious Furiosa the Redeemer. Let them run for now.

That was the advantage of having no history, she thinks vaguely to herself, watching them with steely eyes from her vantage point. Lessons were hard-learned. She remembers Toast saying _"Trojan Horse"_ several times while their plan was taking shape.

Foam-Mouth, or the Most Wretched as he was once known, leaves his hiding place silently. One of the stragglers from the invasion spots him, but too late. Foam-Mouth's face is lit with an angry red for an instant before the flare is thrown. The ground beneath the intruders is ignited, flames blooming acrid and bright.

From her perch high on the cliff, in one of the many ant-hill tunnels, she can feel the heat licking at her flesh. She does not shy away. She raises her hand, closes her fingers, and brings them to her chest.

+++

_There is nothing but the hum of sand under tires, the grumble of combusting diesel, the quiet jostle of still bodies swaying with the road._

_Light splinters the black before her eyes and the flaming skull swims and solidifies above her._

_She gasps despite herself at the sight, the action slicing pain into her side. Immediately there is a large hand on her chest and her first reaction is push it away savagely. Deadly restraint. Despair and confusion jangle in her mind, mussing her senses._

_Her hands grip onto her phantom jailer, ready to twist and pull and claw._

_Her eyes, one swollen and useless, the other drooped with exhaustion and blood loss take in his features one at a time. Eyes panicked and stricken, mouth tight with worry, brow crinkled in concern._

_She stills, frozen by the sight of him. She is in Immortan's car, but her Fool is driving. Her charges are all asleep, using each other for support as much as comfort, whole and alive._

_Her mind is awash with sudden recollection. Immortan is dead. They are alive. He is alive. She is going home._

_She allows him to gently push her back down, her grip slackened. His arm is stretched awkwardly behind him. "Sleep, Furiosa."_

_Her name escaping his lips blankets her in a calm that she does not entirely know what to with. She settles further down._

_She sees his worried eyes watch her in the rear view, and as she slowly descends into black again, she sees them soften._

+++

A quarter mile off, he falls to his knees.

Fire flows from the valley floor, lurid and red. The smoke is sooty and thick, rising in the sky like a thunderhead. He can't hear any screams and he knows it is the silence of the dead.

He is undone, frayed and feral. He wants to look away, but his eyes betray him, staying fixed upon the plume. _Watch what you have done._

Numbly, his eyes shift to the line of ramshackle vehicles in front of the gates, black and stark against the flames. Surely, the victors had spotted him.

Instinct takes hold and his muscles steel, ready for violence.

But, as he searches for figures coming across the sand, listens for shouts of glorious triumph, all he can see and sense is utter stillness.

He feels something flicker in his chest, weak and hesitant, and he stays.

+++

_She raises a gun toward the approaching figure, but she already knows who it is. Relief washes over her, unbidden._

_He uncovers the parcel, full to the brim with incalculable gifts. Bullets. A shoe for the War Boy. He says nothing, turning to the spigot and washing blood not his own from his face._

_She does not know how or why he did it, and she is not sure she wants to know._

+++

She is motionless as the fire carries out its duty. She counts seconds in her mind, gazing unblinkingly into the inferno. The silence that suddenly reigns from below tells her what she needs to know. She nods to the War Pup anxiously standing next to her. He throws himself on the levers and a torrent is released.

The water thunders over the flames, blotting them out one-by-one like so many candles winking out against a great wind. Black smoke is consumed by white, hissing clouds.

She nods again to the War Pup, not wanting to waste any more precious liquids on their enemies. He pulls back on the controls, the pipes guttering and groaning with effort.

All is silent. The steam and smoke is wisping and rising. She sees what she most feared. Movement from below, from the gates. Indignant shouts and furious screams, weak in number, but still dangerous in intent.

" _Now!"_

+++

He hears the dim thunder of water and he can scarcely remember to breathe. His mind is swirling and still all at once. He is frozen in the wake of it. Hope.

He weakly gets to his feet, waiting, unable to think, to do.

His legs move without him, upon hearing her command. The sound is weak from his distance, but nourishes him like rainfall. He hurtles forward, desperation in his breath, his heart pulling with a terrible weight.

He sees his first victim, a burnt thing vainly fighting a Wretched brandishing a bolt cutter. He lowers his torso, rocketing into him like a geyser. All explosive power. Destruction in its natural state.

The would-be assailant goes flying, back heaving a trough through the brackish mud. Straddling his torso, Max lifts himself up and flings his fist into his face, savage and blinding. The boy lays still with a broken neck.

He jumps up in one fluid motion, eyes mad and unnatural. He dimly hears a cry from his right through the blood screaming in his ears. He sees the Wretched tossing him the bolt cutters, pulling what looked like a machete from her side as she rejoins the fray without another word or look. He catches them easily and jettisons back into the throng, swinging madly.

+++

She sees him first.

The guzzoline had taken care of most of the invaders, but a few hundred either had escaped through diving into the many holes, tunnels and burrows that littered the Citadel, or by hanging back with their precious rigs and vehicles. The citizens of the Citadel had prepared well for this eventuality. All hiding from the inferno, but armed to the teeth with whatever could be conceived as lethal.

Her heart leaps into her mouth, seeing him, and her head swims a little. In some long-forgotten recess of her mind, she had wished him here. Of being shoulder to shoulder with him again, insurgents falling around them like so many insects.

She finds herself, with her knife and her gun hot in her hands, pressing to him, invaders nothing more than an inconvenience before her in her pursuit.

When she reaches him, a Gas Town boy has him in a corner.

Big mistake.

He lunges forward, teeth bared like an animal, knocking the boy's gun away with an upward swing of the bolt cutters. With a broad, two-handed arch, he brings them down into his skull an instant later.

When the boy falls, Max looks around for more, but only finds her.

She watches his eyes, lighted with madness and violence, fall upon her like a storm. For one instant, she thinks he may attack.

The worry dies as quickly as it came as she witnesses his face fall into an expression she is sure she has ever seen a human produce. Disbelief, adoration, all-consuming relief. Redemption.

Their moment of foolish stillness is shattered when a gun is pressed into his temple.

Instinct overpowers her, the last stores of her adrenaline rushing over her in a heady, heated wave that lifts her feet from the earth. She throws her knife, hitting her target.

The enemy dies silently, blood splashing from his mouth, his gun falling at Max's feet. He wrenches the blade from the boy's chest and hefts the gun. He opens the clip, counting bullets. He tosses the blade back to her. They exchange the briefest of looks before returning to the throng, together.

+++ 

_We both want the very same thing_

_We are praying, I am the one to save you_

_But you don't even own your own violence_

_Run away from home, your beard is still blue_

_\- Go Long_ Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've edited the first chapter to include a verse of a song that I think is just perfect. It is at the end of this chapter as well. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my craziness.


	3. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her hands clasp air, thin and unredeeming.

He falls.

They're routing them out, pushing them out of the tunnels, the cacophony of battle fading into the still after a sudden storm. They are loping through the dark red stone, Max hot on her heels, breath rough in her ear.

They emerge onto a catwalk, rushing to the opposite spire, having just ensured that the one they had just left was secure. It was supposed to be over. Finished.

A man swings down between them from the catwalk above, a ragged War Boy with silver on his tongue and Vahalla in his eyes. She is halfway down the catwalk by the time she hears the struggle, notices the absence of his heavy footfalls behind her.

She whips around, dread and violence screaming in her chest. A great and terrible awareness of her empty clip and the short distance keeping her from him smashing into her with panicked ferocity. Time slows and she watches as both men hurtle through the weak barricade keeping them from the sand below.

She throws herself down on the floor of the catwalk, the wail in her chest bursting through her like thunder through a cloud. She is flinging herself towards the window of a war rig, metal hand clamping on his leg like a vice, hard enough to bruise. She remembers his arms coming around her ribcage as she was ready to fall from the Immortan's car, meeting the same end as Angharad.

Her hands clasp air, thin and unredeeming.

+++

_It was always better when he left. Staying meant that they would trust him. Trust in him was death. Death was not good for survival._

_He strode away from the rising platform, away from her Green-Place eyes. Survival, he had said to himself. That was all there was._

_He repeats this mantra to himself as he pilfers a bike, a few weapons and supplies, from a machine bay long since abandoned by War Boys when their god was killed._

_His mind screams it at him as he looks back, the platform now almost fully raised. The redemption she sought almost complete._

_The words are lost as the bike roars into life under him, but still they roll unabated through him. Survive, survive, only death here. Only more ghosts._

_He survives._

+++

The Citadel is victorious, but the casualties, both in resource and in number, are far too much for her to consider at this moment.

They heft him into a bed, spattered with mud and blood, reeking of death and guzzoline. "He broke his fall..." She hears Cheedo plead next to her, the girl's voice breaking into the static buzzing filling the chamber of her mind as if she were miles away. "The War Boy... he broke his fall..." She is close to hysterics and is growing worse with every moment Furiosa stands, unmoving and silent in the wake of her panic.

The Vuvalini healer, Vyri, clucks around him. The Sisters, bleeding and scraped, shoo off others who attempt to approach them with white bandages and healing poultices.

"He will be alright?" Her voice was tighter than she had hoped it would be.

The healer did not respond, continuing her probing. The silence broadens until Furiosa had to fight the urge to grab the old woman. Shake her. Make her say the words she knows are coming. _Naught I can do. Fall did 'im in. Might never wake up. Probably shouldn't. Your fault. Why didn't you help him? Where were you? Won't make it, thanks to you._

Vyri finally looks to her, her eyes glimmering with something dangerously close to hope. "Aye."

There is an instant burst of joy amongst the women surrounding him, many bodies unified in relief. Cheedo lets free a cry of triumph, Toast closes her eyes, squeezing Capable's hand, who rests her head on her shoulder. Dag looks down to her belly, shushing it, as if telling the life inside that all was well.

Furiosa decides that the breath she was holding was more for the Sisters than herself.

+++

_Stones are winched to build a wall, rough-hewn in haste, but protection all the same. Her time as Imperator are not over, only evolved._

_Before, there were no walls. Trade agreements, the promise of Aqua Cola, and Immorten's wrath were all the protection they needed. There were only skirmishes with the errant raiding party. The rare capture of a lone wanderer._

_She considers the irony of it. She wanted peace, but only sought battle._

_Fourteen days to skirt the mountains, and then only one to cross the waste until they would be at their gates._

_Four days after their return, she is up and half-blind. She wills her steps to be steady and not worth question. She levels her voice to be comforting in confidence, as well as resplendent with authority. All the things she neither believed nor cherished. Fire brims in her side, hot oil simmers in her chest, but she cannot think of it now._

_"We have them," Toast intones as they stand at the mouth of Immortan's skull, waving her hand to the throng below. "The Milk Mothers, but we knew that already...The War Pups, most of the War Boys..."_

_Furiosa gives her a questioning look, disbelief lining her face. Toast shrugs and Dag leans over to her, "They love you." She answers the question unasked. "They love us, but you are their Redeemer."_

_She closes her eyes slowly at this, not seeing Capable's nod to her. "Aye, and you are ours too, Furiosa."_

_She opens her eyes, her head a little swimmy and her knees watery. She chooses to ignore this undeserved honor. "What else?"_

_One of the Vuvalini, Forthright she is called for good reason, answers "You need rest."_

_"I've rested enough!" She spits acidly over her shoulder. "We have ten days."_

_"We've started the wall," Capable offers, conciliatory._

_"Then we finish it. We fight." She looks around at the others, weighing their courage. They are silent and still, but they all look to her, the cold terror that had been crowning them before now fast retreating. Something larger and more heated was spilling into the room in its place. She allows herself relax, if only for a breath._

_She palms her arm, adjusting the heavy weight. She can recall only one other time in her life where she was so tired._

_"Toast, make sure every available Black Thumb is in the Chop Shops working on whatever may be of use." She is suddenly commanding, words clipped and brittle. "Capable, I want you to take a team of War Pups and scour this place for anything that could be used as a weapon. Distribute accordingly. Cheedo, Dag, get the Milking Mothers together and clean and repair every gun you can find. Forthright, I want you and Vyri to clean house in the Organic's lair. Get it ready and clean. We'll need it."_

_They all nod, mouths set in thin lines of determination and they leave her in silence. She looks down to the mottled sea of people below her. No wonder Joe preferred this vantage, able to dismiss his wretched charges as nothing more than stains on sand. She leans on the rough stone, rock cutting into her hands, head hanging between sagging shoulders. She must go down to supervise the construction of the wall. She must._

_"Max," The sound settles into her, pliant and cool on her skin like rain. She lifts her head, scouring the horizon despite herself, before lifting herself up and leaving the desert at her back._

+++

Fire engulfs him, his mouth open in soundless torment. His ears burned with the buzz of bullets and the howls of pain. They fall into flame and dust. He thrashes free from a tepid pool, War Boys at his heels and a ghost flickering from the sky above him. _Where were you, Max?_

A sound, animal and raw, thrashes from his chest and his terrors are fractured into the vision of the place where he had been trapped, commoditized and traded at will. His hands flash before him, searching for chains. He brings palms to his face, feeling for cold, sharp metal. His arms flail against a cage.

"Max, _shh!_ "

The pale image of The Dag sifts into his vision, his name plummeting into his brain like a fresh bullet. _Where were you, Max?_ Her hands are empty and vulnerable, face white and pleading.

His ghosts flicker into nothing and his realm of bondage blur and sharpen into a room of windows and stars. His breath leaves him, anger and fear with it, and he sinks back, eyes blinking for familiarity.

Dag offers him a comforting look, a small smile. He stares disbelieving at her, chest heaving, breath coming through his nose hard.

He leans against the cool stone behind the rough cot he finds himself in, not trusting reality, waiting for the picture to splinter and condense into powdered bodies and the roar of war drums. "Citadel...?" His voice is like sand sluicing over rock and he blinks against the pain that burns in his mouth.

She lowers her hands, relief washing over her. He wants to apologize for frightening her, but his throat bars him from making another sound. "We're fine," She states with a smile, palms going to the slight swell of her stomach. "Battered an' bruised, but we will be fine. Just like you, I reckon." She gets to her feet, fetching a flagon from the far wall. "You gave everyone quite a fright."

He simply nods with a hum, not fully understanding her words, still trying to grapple with what happened and how he came to be here. He wants to ask about her, but he finds that he cannot say her name. The word was too final, too imbibed with hope. He shakes his head to rid himself of it.

Dag lifts a metal cup to his face. He drinks from it hungrily, the water seeping into the cuts in his throat from the sand and night terrors, dribbling down his neck.

"Get some rest," Dag commands cooly.

She stands, feet taking her to the door. He watches her, and the pain, beaten back by adrenaline, takes hold again. It presses savagely behind his eyes and girds his arm and side in a dull sear of heat. He finds that he does not want her to go, but does not know how to articulate such an alien, vulnerable desire.

She pauses at the threshold, and turns her head, "You're the only one in here," She says as if answering a question he had presented to her. "And there is a gun on the floor by your right hand," She offers him another smile as he finds it and hefts it before him, checking the clip. Fully loaded. "It works. She made sure of that."

When she leaves, he settles more easily into the bed, placing the gun back on the ground. There was no need for it here.

+++

_Searching, always. Moving, trekking for scraps like a harried vulture._

_He was never alone, his ghosts calling out to him. Hounded. Taunting him with their death. Pointing him to precious wreckage. Ensuring that he would survive one more day, so they may continue the conquest of his mind._

_He runs when the new ones appear. Engine whining beneath him, sand in his breath and the sun on his skin, he races to wherever they cannot catch up._

_They always do._

_She finds him, on the fourteenth day, digging into a tangled heap of what once a pursuit vehicle. One of Joe's, if the baked, white skin of the driver was any indication. He wrenches the wheel free from the shattered steering column, sudden in panic. Hands gripping and flexing on the arched metal, eyes wide and unblinking. Her wheel._

_"I need you here," She says, voice soft but rough-edged with burdensome purpose. That same voice that made him throw in his lot with hers like so much cargo._

_He looks up at her words, hand vice-like on his gun. She's there, her face still as he had last glimpsed it. Her eye swollen and heavy, Immortan's blood smeared on her jaw. Unhealed and un-whole. He blinks, hard, willing her away. But she cannot so easily be escaped. He scrabbles to his feet, holding out the wheel with the gaping skull in front of him like a shield._

_"Didn't want-" He begins, not sure of what he was going to say but it is rendered useless in an instant. She points beyond his shoulder. To the east. He is reluctant to look away, but her glances quickly behind him, seeing a trail of dust arching over the shoulder of mountain at his back. He can now hear the thrum of sand and the murmur of engines._

_He looks back and she is gone._

+++

She watches him, breathing steady and real, moonlight making silver sand dunes out of the ripples of blankets.

She had come as soon as she saw Dag enter the crowded infirmary. She had muttered a small apology to Vyri, motioning for a War Pup to take her place as nurse to Wretched with a full metal jacket in his intestine. They would lose him in the night, but they could allow him to pass peacefully.

She steps slowly into the room, not wanting to wake him. He is stiller than she has ever seen him. No twitching against ghosts that she could not see and he could not attain.

When she reaches his bed, her toe brushes against something that scrapes dully across the rough stone floor. She winces at the jarring intrusion into the silence, but he only groans, throwing an arm over his face.

She bends to pick up the offending object. His brace, bent from his fall, stiff and unyielding from sand and blood.

She places it down on the edge of the bed, and walks to the other side of the room to pick up one of the old school desks Immortan had for educating his precious Wives. The otherwise inconsequential weight of it is tellingly heavy for her, but she ignores the pain lancing through her and places the desk carefully down next to the bed. She places the brace down and slides into the hard vinyl chair. She, settles back for a moment, watching him, taking him in like a new painting.

A smile tugged at her mouth. How fortuitous that she always had some tools on her, having her own mechanical limb to care for.

+++

_"You're not coming?" Cheedo asked her, shock lighting her face. "But he's..."_

_"Toast will stay with him," She interjected, probably a touch too loudly than what was required. "And then you, and then Capable, and then Dag."_

_"But, Furi-" Capable started, almost with pity, a hand on her shoulder._

_"I have too much work to do!" She finds herself shouting, feeling trapped, suffocated. Her eyes burned with salt and her jaw clenched with purpose. She couldn't walk into that room with him. She would not come out. Vyri had told her it could take over a week for him to wake up. "Blood and water," She had intoned over his body before they brought him up here, "And above all_ rest _. Best make sure he is as secure and comfortable as possible."_

_"When he wakes up, find me."_

+++

She is bent over, humming, engrossed.

Surely, a dream. His eyes creak open, reluctant to relinquish their hold of her.

But the white nimbus of her, washed by moonlight, doesn't fade. The radio static of his brain dissolves and there is only her and and the humming. He can't remember the last time he heard such a sound. It was too indulgent a comfort in this world.

He doesn't know what makes her do it, but she looks up. Maybe it was his quickening breath, or the blood swirling in his chest. His eyes rove over her, ensuring himself that she is alive. Healed and whole. "Hey," She offers with a smile, not forced to comfort him, but real in her joy of seeing him alive. He knows the last time someone looked at him like that. It thrills him to the bone with a heady fear and a heated want for more.

She rises from the desk where she had been working. He looks at the tangle of metal and leather questioningly, eyes only leaving her for an instant. "Your brace," She says, seeing the direction of his gaze. "Figured it needed a tune up." He doesn't realize that what he is feeling is gratitude until he is able to reflect upon the moment later.

She lowers herself onto the thin margin of empty space at the side of the cot. He is only slightly taken aback by this familiar gesture. Her face is shadowed by strange angles, eyes lit with starlight. Her flesh hand is wrapped in clean linen, and there seems to be some sort of salve smeared on her forehead. She pours him a cup of water and passes it to him.

He drinks deeply, thankful that his hands aren't shaking anymore. He points to her treated injuries, "You...?"

She shakes her head, "Fine." She answers, and something in her voice makes him believe her without question. "I can't... remember, though," She admits, looking at her hands.

"Fire," He croaks through a gulp of water, and she is looking at him, confusion flashing on her brow. "Flamethrower," He continues, brushing her bandaged hand. "Knocked the bastard off of his feet."

She is looking at him with a strange, inexplicable expression, but he ignores it. "Shrapnel," He gestures to her scalp, making a starburst with his hand. "Shotgun. Got 'im with a machete."

She pauses and they simply share a mutual pause that brings them both back to War Rigs and Pole Cats. He swallows hard, eyes steady on her. Finally, she raises her hand to his brow, thumb ghosting over the gash there. "Pistol butt," She says quietly, "A Bullet Farmer going for Toast. Sniped him from over your shoulder." Her hand floats down to his neck, blossomed in yellow and brown. "Choke collar. Swung the butt of my rifle into his face."

A hand on her bound ankle. "Bastard got you with his empty rifle. Kick in the face set him right."

A palm on his left ear, chipped with a bullet trail. "Sniper rifle. Sniped him back."

Fingers on a cleaned gash on her forearm. "Idiot with a pocket knife. Threw 'im."

Her hand rests on his shoulder, her eyes losing the brightness they had harbored just seconds before, face falling in grim lines and angles. "Fall."

His brows knit together, lips moving over a question he did not know how to ask. "Fourty feet. Maybe more." The words seem to hurt her as she says them, stabbing through her like a knife. "Dislocated your shoulder. Broke some ribs." Her hand absently landed on his ribcage, no pressure, all warmth. "I couldn't..."

He sees her close her eyes against whatever was surging over her, making certain that he could not see it writ large and undeniable on her face. Her efforts are in vain. The light in her eyes when she reveals them to him again betray her and drove him to madness. He wanted nothing more than to crease his hands over her brow, smoothing the lines away until she couldn't remember how to manifest such a look ever again.

He reaches for her, a tangle of fingers in her own. His throat is working hard, but his lips stay his voice for a moment. She pauses to drink in his eyes, panicked and troubled. "We are fine," He assures her, the grip on her hand quickly turning desperate. He never thought that he would have to be the one to reassure her, Imperator, flame and brimstone made life.

He watches her, seconds falling into moments. He does not know what to do. Silence has always comforted him, been his constant companion This silence is unwieldy, unpredictable. His skin prickles under its weight.

She leans forward, head resting tenuously on his forehead, wary of the healing wound there. He feels cold metal snake around the nape of his neck and he suppresses the shudder of danger. He raises the hand not entangled with her own, and places the pads of his fingers over the pearly brand at the back of her neck.

"Max," She murmurs against his temple, charging the air. His eyes slam shut, breath rushing out of him, retreating from the weight filling his chest.

+++

 _"You burn in the Mekong to prove your worth_  
Go long! Go long!  
Right over the edge of the earth  
You have been wronged  
Tore up since birth  
You have done harm  
Others have done worse

 _Will you tuck your shirt?_  
Will you leave it loose?  
You are badly hurt  
You are a silly goose"  
\- _Go Long_ Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a _real mother fucker_ to write you guys. I mean, I don't think anything I've written has simultaneously been so easy for me to write while also fighting me the entire way. 
> 
> I'm not totally sure that I want to continue this, but we'll see. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much to everyone for reading. I don't think I have ever been so overwhelmed by the support I get from you guys!


	4. Belong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The desert lived within her, and he belonged in the desert. With scorched earth and swirling dust devils.

There is heat pressing on her eyes. She gasps a little as she comes awake, pain stabbing in her neck.

Sun is streaming into the Vault. Golden motes of dust glow in shivery sunbeams and the sky spreads itself an electric blue through the domed windows.

Vyri is there, flitting about, muttering to herself as she checks bandages and reapplies salves, both to her and Max. The old woman either does not notice her waking, or does not much care.

Furiosa groans against the stiffness in her neck and squints around against the high-noon sun. She is sitting up, as if in a chair, but there is cool stone on her back. Her legs are stretched before her, filling the small lip of room left to her on the bed. His arm is winded around the tops of her thighs, hand tucked under knees. A protective gesture, so she would not fall. He is on his side, flat on the bed, forehead pressed to her hip.

She feels that, maybe, she should feel some amount of embarrassment, but she only feels a need to lie still so as to not wake him. "Never seen him like this," Vyrie whispered more to herself than to Fuirosa as she rucked up his shirt to apply salve to the jagged cut across the top of his scapula. A meat hook from a wild Gas Town boy who was out of guns. She had thrown her knife in his neck. "So still, so quiet."

Indeed, the only way Max communicated any displeasure was a small chuff of air from his nose and his arm tightening around her legs. "Shouldn't be laying like that though, but ah..."

She leaned back against the wall, eyes closing for just a little while longer.

+++

She took control of most of his healing, knowing without prompting, that he would not want it otherwise. Bathing and wrapping and smearing healing herbs and salves. She is dabbing at the souvenir of a pistol butt above his eye when he clears his throat, readying to speak. He had been altogether silent for most of the three days since he had been awake, only responding when prompted, and then only with grunts, curses, or short, clipped sentences.

"Thank you," He says in a voice meant only for her. He is breathing heavy with the effort of sitting up, shoulders slumped in fatigue. His eyes dart to hers quickly before he looks away, something like shame surrounding the lines of his mouth. She doesn't know how to react to this telling admission. In their time together, fighting shoulder to shoulder, they had continually indebted and repaid each other in silent turn. Gratitude was a waste of breath and precious energy.

This was quite another debt, one that he would never take on with another soul in this broken, wasted land. Something given to him that served her little in return.

She felt the need to chide him for his ignorance. Admonish him for placing himself so low among her small number of allies that he should think that he should thank her, owe her, for anything.

Instead she treads a light palm over his scalp, a benediction, and feels the heavy breath he releases on her arm.

"Let me help you with your back." She says after a quiet moment. She feels him tense for an instant, before she helps him lift his shirt over his head, navigating over his sling.

She knows what is under his shirt, knows the proper protocol when a suitable bloodbag was captured. Labeling was very important, precise and descriptive. It had to be permanent, so as to not fade with the time and neglect.

She feels fire in her breath and heat pressing in her eyes as she traces the black lines buried in his flesh. She takes a small gasping breath, as if kicked. She has to swallow hard, will the fury down, tamp the humid flush of rage creeping up her collar bones. She lifts her hand, clutching a rag pregnant with cooling water and healing herbs, and brings it first to the smear of the brand at the base of his neck. She closes her eyes, killing Joe again, again.

Limbs shaky with a slow-rolling violence, she moves her way down the words. They are difficult to make out, being upside down and badly covered in nail marks, but she has to see them. Has to know what they etched in his flesh. "Max," she murmurs as the cloth passes over _'No Name'._ "Healthy," she continues as she wipes away ' _No Lumps No Bumps Full-Life Clear'._ She is speaking softly, as if to herself, but the words are for him. So he may steal away with them and clutch them to his chest when his ghosts came howling.

The next two lines became "Whole." _'Multiple Scars Heals Fast'_ transmuted to "Healed."

The most prominent lines were what provided most use to Joe and his infirm battle fodder. Bold letters branding the blood that pumped beneath the words, marking it as his no longer. The same blood giving life to a chrome-mouthed War Boy who would end up speeding right into the gates of Vahalla for them. The same blood that just barely caught her over a precipice and pulled her up to light and redemption and green.

"Life," she breathes, the word made rough and ragged as it was pulled through the slow combustion of loss and victory. Of pain and healing.

She caught his eyes over his shoulder. Words would not do right now, so he bowed his head and she scrubbed the dirt and old salve away and wrapped him up careful, like the precious thing he was.

+++

She took her meals at the table across the room and bathed in the pool beside the bed, pragmatic in her immodesty. The Wives came in to talk to her of repairs and restoration, always in the room directly outside. The meetings sometimes lasted hours, but Max never interrupted. She shuffled through sheafs of parchment, tracing diagrams and jotting notes where she could (she was never much good at writing).

"How long?" Toast asked suddenly as Furiosa took a report from Capable about the progress of the aquifer modifications.

Furiosa didn't have to ask what she was talking about. "Probably another 10 days."

"I'd say eight. Your fool heals fast." Vyrie interjected.

"Good," Toast took the tooth pick from her mouth and pointed it at Furiosa. "We need bullets and we need guzzoline. Real bad."

Furiosa squinted at her, taking slow steps away from Capable. The heady tension that filled the room told Furiosa all she needed to know. They had been planning this. "What exactly are you saying to me?" Her voice was honed sharp and lethal.

"We need you, Furiosa," Toast said, eyes steely but face not altogether cold. "You and Max. We need supplies. You can get them."

She pulls back at the mention of his name. "Max needs rest-"

"Aye, but how long you reckon he's goin' t' stay?" Forthright called from her place against the far wall. "Might as well put that highway-man spirit to use."

A sudden rage shivered up her spine, igniting her eyes. "He is not a _tool_ , a _weapon_ to be traded-"

"We _know_ , Furiosa," Capable interjected quickly, desperate to throw the train back on its tracks. She pitched Forthright an acid look over her shoulder. "But we need supplies. We burned up most of our guzzoline. Bullets are as scarce as Forthright's tact. We need to go out to Bullet Farm, to Gas Town. Talk and negotiate. We can't do that without you." She paused, searching Furiosa's face, as if gauging whether she should continue. "Without Max."

Furiosa stilled a bit under Capable's even keel, but her glance bounced around, accusatory, to the other women gathered in the room. "Why Max?"

"He kicked the Old Bastard off the car."

"Between the two of you, you took down most of two war parties."

"The people know him now."

"He belongs with you."

The last answer came from Dag, who said it as if she were giving Furiosa a harvest count. And really, she was. It was easily spoken fact, and she could not protest reality.

She was silent for a time, letting the words and plans and hopes of her Sisters sink into her skin like a slow-working salve. The hum of sand under rubber bloomed sudden and loud in her ears and the taste of blood tanged copper in her mouth. She felt vital, dangerously alive, for one brief instant, before reality crashed back into her. And she could no longer move or think in the wake of it

"My place is here," She protested weakly. The women simply watched her, knowing that she did not truly believe it.

"Think about it," Toast said softly, touching the back of her hand. And she did.

+++

She slept on a bed she had pulled up next to his, pushed together. Most nights she would awake to his thrashes and gasps. She would blot them out with her body and he would scatter away like a kicked dog. Sometimes he instantly regained himself, gulping air and pressing his forehead to hers until he could safely close his eyes. Other nights were harder, where she would have to scrabble out of the bed before lunging at him because he was going for the gun with far-away eyes and she would land the metal knuckles of her hand into his jaw. He was always the one to apologize in the morning.

One night, she wakes to her hands at his throat. He looks at her, alarmed but not afraid. "Hey, hey," he grits out. "It's me."

She is still holding his neck, though her grip has slackened. Adrenaline drums in her veins, but the fog is retreating. She dreamed of The Wives. Her mother. Valkyrie. Ace. _Him_. His fingers are curled around her wrists and there is such a light of understanding in his eyes, stripping her bare before him, she wants to weep. "Stay," she finds herself saying, voice sounding from far away. The request is weary and vulnerable, and the weight of it is not lost on him, and she tilts her jaw a bit at him then, modifying the word to command, rather than entreaty.

The wrinkle in his brow makes it clear that he knows what she is truly asking of him. _You can't leave without promising to come back. We fucking belong together and there is nothing else to it now except burn, burn, burn together._

He is a feral, haunted thing, but she knows he finds some shred of peace within himself in being what she needs. He nods and lowers himself beside her, only acquiescing to one of her demands, for now. She tells herself that she seals her spine to his chest because of the desert cold that never really finds its way up here. That the heat in her blood is from her nightmares as he wraps a heavy arm over her hips, careful and slack.

+++

He wanted to get in the open air. His breathing was better and he could walk without flinching and groaning, but she insisted in helping him all the same. He wasn't ungrateful.

They snuck out in the early morning, her leading the way through the tunnels with her fingers on his wrist. They emerged, ages later, at the top of the spire. The cold air stung at the sweat that had beaded on his brow and oxygen spiraled in his lungs like a buggy with its tires out. Gulping air, he closed his eyes and reveled in the dark, open world for a small moment.

"Here," She whispered as she took his forearm to lead him elsewhere. He followed, eyes searching the moon-washed butte. It took a moment, but he realized that he was walking through vine and stem and leaf. Things nearly forgotten, blown away by sand and radiation.

He came to a halting stop, transfixed, as they entered a field of corn, the stalks reaching to his belly. She stopped, watching him, as he plucked a leaf and held it between forefinger and thumb. He could only look at her, wonder and something akin to awe etched in his eyes.

The moon was rising above her shoulder, splashing her in a white glow that left him slightly breathless. All hammered-out steel and rippling nitro under marble skin. The desert lived within her, and he belonged in the desert. With scorched earth and swirling dust devils.

There was question in her face as she looked at him, but ther was also a certain amount of understanding. He took her hand and she lead the way.

She was taking them to what once a shed, though it had been modified to hang off of a narrow lip of stone on the north face of the rock. She helped him step down into the little shelter and set about lighting a lantern, spreading blankets. He reached his hand out to still her, taking the blanket from her. "Let me."

She didn't argue, instead kneeling against the wall of the shed. When he was finished lighting the lantern and positioning the guns they had brought in proper, accessible points, he sunk to the floor with a groan. He spread an arm to her, blanket over his shoulders like a cloak. She came to him slowly, unsure, but he hummed in what he hoped was a reassuring way.

He felt her searing heat meld into his side and he couldn't help the sigh that pulled from his chest. Their legs stretched in front of them, pressed together. His fingers spread above the premature end of her left arm. The back of her skull rested on flesh of his shoulder.

"This is nice," she sighed. He squeezed his fingers on her arm ever so in agreement.

The cool, almost blissful expression she donned sank into something more dark and fateful. "Max-"

He had already begun to shift easily into sleep, a new and slightly distressing development. He liked to blame it on his injuries. "Furiosa." He thinks that he feels a pulse move through her body and into his own at the sound of her name.

"We-" She stops, licking dry lips and sets her shoulders slightly. Readying for fight. "I need you."

He remembers the back of a War Rig and a kill-switch sequence (one, one, two, red, black, go). He remembers clicking the safety back on and a bone-handled gear shift (knife). He licked his lips, cleared his throat, all words to respond to such a statement stuck uncomfortably in his throat. They were too large and dangerous to bring out in the open.

"We need supplies-bullets, fuel-I need to go find a way to get them." She looked back at him and her eyes blazed and sparked with purpose. Hope. "I want you with me."

He felt his threadbare nerves firing, scrambling for the kill-switch that would get him to run and kick and claw away from this place. Away from her. Instead, his head is nodding in slow agreement, his breath catching in everything her eyes are able to make him to understand. _We both know you're not going to let me do it by myself._

She smiles then, small and resolute, but brilliant all the same.

+++

_There is a man_

_Who will only speak in code_

_Backing slowly, slowly on down the road_

_May he master everything_

_Such men may know_

_About loving and letting go_

_-_ Joanna Newsom "Go Long"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go guys. Finally fought this out of me. 
> 
> I'm not done though. Obviously. 
> 
> Thank you *so much* for all of your support. This would mean pretty much nothing without you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello. Newest member to add to the Mad Max Awesome Train.
> 
> I had a tough time writing this. I am already a perfectionist, and I don't want to mistreat these characters whom I have come to love so much. To top it off, all the fic I've read here has been superb. I mean really, guys, give yourselves a pat on the fucking back. What an awesome fandom!
> 
> If anyone would like to beta for me, let me know. It's been a few years since I've written fic for anything, so my old beta has faded into obscurity, and not having one makes me nervous! (Also, none of my other notes will EVER be this long again, promise.)


End file.
